Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s Fourth Plinth submission needs to win. With an ATM at its base, a cacophony of sound is heard throughout Trafalgar Square when the machine is in use. The artists’ concept is worthy to induce that particular cognitive experience known as the British sense of humor, all the while recognizing Britain’s rich theological history and the financial centrality of London.

Untitled (ATM/Organ) consists of installing an automated teller machine (ATM) in the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square, connected to a functioning pipe organ which will produce sound by driving pressurised air through pipes selected via the ATM machine keyboard.

Each time customers press the ATM keyboard to access bank accounts worldwide to make cash withdrawals, credit card cash advances, account balance inquiries and so on, it will trigger the pipe organ to produce a range of notes and chords at varying degrees of loudness which will reverberate throughout Trafalgar Square.

Artist biographies

Jennifer Allora, born in 1974 Philadelphia, USA and Guillermo Calzadilla born in 1971 in Havana, Cuba, live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Through sculpture, photography, performance, sound and video, their work explores mark making, traces, survival and the relationship between the human and the animal. Most recently, they have created a series of works that explore the interplay between militarism and sound in the context of today’s global state of war.

They have had solo shows at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2007), Serpentine Gallery (2007), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008), Haus der Kunst München, Munich (2008) and the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (2009) and have a forthcoming exhibition at the Lisson Gallery, London, UK in 2011.